► Rachel Botsman: Trust me, this changes everything

After Uber and Airbnb, what next for the sharing economy? And what even is the sharing economy? One thing’s for sure, it isn’t just a technology trend. Over to Rachel Botsman:

“The sharingeconomy is an economic system that takes unused assets. It can be anything from spaces, to physical stuff, to capital. It unlocks the value of those by matching ‘needs’ and ‘haves’ in ways that create greater efficiency and access.”

► We chatted to the leading authority on collaborative consumption about the value and trust being unlocked, the access being democratised and the real breakthrough innovation – the smartphone.

Botsman defined the concept of the sharing economy in her 2010 book What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live and it has subsequently been heralded by Time magazine as one of the ‘10 Ideas that Will Change the World’. Increasingly focused on the topic of trust, in 2015 she designed the world’s first MBA course on the collaborative economy, which she teaches at Oxford University’s Saïd School of Business.

Video produced by Atlas of the Future for Project Breakthrough (United Nations Global Compact/ Volans). Check out our other Breakthrough videos here.

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